U.S. Small Business Story: The ComfortCake Company

August 17, 20190

ComfortCake Company is 10 years old this year, and I started it because I love pound cake. But we’re now at a point where we want to take the business into a whole different level. Through the Clinton Foundation, I’ve been able to learn from Katrina Markoff, because Mentorship is more than just picking up the phone and saying, “How you doin’?” You know, it’s like, “What are you doing?” “What are you deliverables?” “When is this going to be done?” Entrepreneurship, sometimes can be a lonely place, where you’re trying to figure out how to do stuff and lead your team, but it’s very important, for people like me, to be able to work with people like Katrina who have gone through the challenges that I’m going through and they have come out on the other side and they’re still smiling and they’re still standing, and Katrina has done all that and more. And she’s doing that at a high level, which is the way that we want to operate, and so to be able to have those one on one dialogues, and to really be honet with both the challenges and the success stories has really been tremendous. –I think, in a lot of ways, I’m really just a sounding board for her, because it can be lonely, because you don’t know a lot entrepenuers, you don’t have a lot of people to bounce your ideas off of. –The key result of our mentorship relationship is something that Katrina has been pushing me to do which is to look at the airport concessions because of her work there and how that’s been successful. And at first, I was like, “Oh, no, you know, I need to stay in my lane!” and she’s like, “No, no! You can do this.” –You know, I’m constantly learning, so going through the experiences, opening my eyes, I think Amy and I now have a relationship that will last forever. –And when you actually get to work with the genius behind something like this and say, okay, this is a really person–she can do it, I can do it–and that is really important to me because that’s what I want to do for other people as well. And that’s what the Clinton Foundation for Entrepreneurship is already doing and I’m just to be able to be a part.